Florencio Ortiz was born in Puerto Rico in 1942 and raised on a family farm. He moved to New York in 1960 seeking opportunity and began working in landscaping. Over the next decades, he gained experience in the field and started his own landscaping business, Florencio Ortiz Landscaping, in 1967. The business grew successfully over the following years. In 2005, after 47 years in the industry, Florencio retired and passed the business to his son Noel's company, Great Outdoors Landscaping.